Thursday, July 15, 2004

More problems for Michael Moore. A Canadian law student wants him prosecuted for violating the Elections Act, which amongst other things prohibits foreigners from trying to overtly influence voters. I don't know which is sillier, the provision itself, or that someone actually thinks that Moore's statements had any sort of real impact on the election. The kind of people most likely to listen to what Moore has to say are the same kind of people least inclined to vote for the current Conservative Party.

The whole thing brings to mind Charles de Gaulle, the late French president. While in Quebec in 1967 he shouted "Vive la Quebec libre" during an appearance at Montreal's City Hall. The statement was seen by many as supporting the then fledgling Quebec separatist movement, and still pisses off many federalists to this day. de Gaulle advocating Quebec separatism is interesting when one considers that France ended its colonial rule of Algeria under his leadership only a few short years earlier, an act that split French society and lead to violence by the OAS, a right wing group opposed to French withdrawal from Algeria. The OAS attempted to assassinate de Gaulle several times, acts which served as inspiration for Frederick Forsythe's classic nove The Day of the Jackal. Some Quebec intellectuals even tried to draw a parallel between the Algerian independance struggle and their own desire for separation, an argument that ignored that Quebeckers had the same political rights as their counterparts elsewhere in Canada and were not ruled by a foreign power who suppressed their political movements by force.